As unpopular as this comment will be, this film is a total sham. It's so one sided and false that it would be funny if so many people didn't buy into it. John Lennon was a fascist who supported the communist Russian, Chinese and North Vietnamese governments through personal and band proceeds from their shows. His support of the guerrilla movement of the vicious Black Panther's is covered but oddly enough it is glorified. Let's remember that the Black Panther's were one of the largest violent anti American groups during that time period. They shot, stabbed and beat people for disagreeing with their views and bombed businesses and government buildings. No surprises here, this is to be expected out of Hollywood. I just wish that more of our young people had the benefit of the truth of historic record instead of relying on these kinds of factual inaccuracies to guide their thought process.

I cannot thank the directors/producers of this film enough. Using much classic film and TV footage (some possibly never seen widely before), interviews both old and new, with his music expertly mixed in, this movie is a 'must see' for even casual John Lennon and Beatles fans. It is also an intimate look at John and Yoko as a couple and of their projects together.This is a very heart-felt and well thought out memorial, and an inspiration for anyone working toward a more sane and peaceful reality/world. The film and extras should be required viewing in high school or college history, social studies, and ethics classes. Many viewpoints are presented from the wide variety of people interviewed for this documentary. Anyone wanting to understand the passion and magic of John Lennon, and the wild ride that was the USA from the late Sixties through early Seventies would find something very worthwhile in this moving film. A documentary that is definitely NOT boring, and one to watch often!

I have not rated this movie, as I did not watch it very long after Geraldo Rivera was presented as a credible commentator.I don't know anything about the agenda or quality of this documentary that you may know if you watched past the first ten minutes. It certainly features a lot of great music and an impressive array of commentators. But if you're going to pretend to journalism, and address and exploit some of the sacred relics of counterculture, you should damn well know better than to talking-head Geraldo Rivera interchangeably with Noam Chomsky and Bobby Seale and Gore Vidal.David Leaf and John Scheinfeld are the guys behind the UNKNOWN series of hack biography/archive footage exploitation videos on old comedians. The Jonathan Winters one lets Winters commandeer the proceedings in a stream-of-consciousness performance, to mixed result, but the kinescope routines make it a keeper. Also that one does not feature Geraldo Rivera.

I am too young to really remember John Lennon being alive and what I know of him is mostly based around the Beatles and his later solo efforts which, in my view, saw him becoming a bit of a peacenik under the influence of Yoko Ono. As a result this film sat on my recorder for quite a few weeks before I got round to watching it but I am glad I did because it is actually a very interesting film that is pitched perfectly to inform viewers such as myself who perhaps did not know anything about John Lennon in the latter stages of his life.It goes without saying that the film is sympathetic to Lennon and what he was trying to do and I suppose this is a fault within the telling that the bias towards him as a person is inherently there. This will put off some viewers who simply disagree with him, draw in those that agree but to the casual viewer I doubt it will come over as a problem and indeed for me it was just something I observed rather than something that was an issue. Anyway, what the film did well for me was to acknowledge that Lennon was an artist and a peacenik but to move him beyond the images and songs that we all know. This gives him as a person more of a foundation and meaning because, viewed in context of his time he actually comes over as a key figure and an intelligent man (albeit an artist!).I'm sure some will see this as a problem because they disagree with it but the approach works. Setting the foundation and showing Lennon speaking out (in his own way) builds well to make the later persecution by Nixon's Whitehouse to be a natural progression and believable rather than being a rather sensationalist newspaper headline (or indeed like the title of the film itself). The use of archive footage is really well done as it makes rightly makes Lennon the main character while the contributions are mostly relevant and edited into the main flow well.An interesting and engaging documentary that sits as a fitting tribute to who John Lennon was, even if it focuses on a specific period in his life. Understandably slanted to the left politically, it will appeal to the casual viewer quite easily.